Today Provident CRM unveiled SugarCRM’s first live Demo of their new 7.0 platform, based on HTML5, CCS3 & PhoneGap.

At Provident CRM’s annual CRM event in Dublin Clint Oram, SugarCRM CTO and Co-Founder presented to Business Owners and Sales Executives a worldwide preview of the SugarCRM 7.0 platform. Due to be launched next April, Clint was keen to get feedback from the tech-savvy audience.

Later in the Day, Clint Oram was interviewed by Sunday Business Post Editor Adrian Wecker and gave his thoughts on the environment for in Dublin for US Foreign Direct Investment.

Shortage of IT developers ‘a challenge’

Ireland needs to shift its emphasis from “hard sciences” to software development and skills that are in critically short supply here, according to a multinational software boss who moved his company from Ireland to Germany.

Clint Oram, co-founder of SugarCRM, said that the difficulty in finding skilled Irish IT software developers was a contributory factor in his company moving its main European office from Dublin to Munich.

“It was our biggest challenge in Dublin,” said Oram. “Compared to Google and Microsoft, we were a relatively small operation. In the end, most of the developers we ended up hiring here were German.”

SugarCRM now employs 45 people in its Munich office and 50 people in the Belarusian city of Minsk.

Oram said that one reason for the dearth of skilled software developers in Ireland is the education system’s preference for “hard sciences” over practical software engineering.

“Ireland has been more focused on hard sciences, which is understandable, given the importance of the multinational pharmaceutical sector here,” he said.

“There is also an emphasis on computer science in universities and colleges. But that doesn’t always translate into software development, which is less theoretical, less academic and more practical.”

Senior executives from IT multinationals have echoed Oram’s view on the lack of skilled software engineers in Ireland. Hundreds of high-paying software jobs remain unfilled.

“I was disappointed that we had to leave Dublin. I liked it here and we put a lot of energy into the Dublin office,” said Oram.

Oram was in Dublin at an event organised by the Irish technology firm Provident Technology to brief partners on the company’s next generation of software.